Paul Freedman (1) (1949–)

In choosing to read this work, which has been on the TBR list ever since it was published, I mostly wanted to learn something about the legendary Delmonico's. What you basically get is an examination of the conflicting axis of American commercial cooking, between the rise and fall of French cuisine (a world-wide phenomena), the contrasting American desire for both reliability and variety (which tends to blunt an emphasis on excellence), and, not emphasized enough in a lot of the comments I've seen, restauranteering as a business. I found this very enlightening, though there is a bit of unevenness from case study to case study. Also, even though this book is less than 10 years old, it's already feeling a little dated, in that the chef-centric trend in American cooking dealt with in the epilog appears to have taken a hard hit, even before the impact of the COVID pandemic.… (more)